Glasnost: As of Now, It’s a Matter of Convenience, Not an Ethic

How much glasnost is there in glasnost? To be fair, the difference between the Soviet Union today and in the Brezhnev era is enormous. The Soviet press now prints articles that would never have appeared five years ago, and if they had somehow slipped through the cracks the editors as well as the writers would have been dismissed from their positions and subjected to rigorous interrogation.

This is one of the most exciting periods in recent Soviet history. That has its costs. As a Leningrad professor explained, previously he never wasted his time with Soviet newspapers or television. Now he finds that he must spend at least two hours a day reading a paper. A reporter for the Leningrad evening paper told me that his paper’s sales are up at least 10%. Some of the most daring papers, like Moscow News, are virtually unavailable. As a Moscow newsstand dealer complained, she orders 600 copies of Moscow News but gets only 150.

Each day there is something new. One day a writer argues that the ruble should be convertible, that everyone should be allowed to import and export what he wants, that domestic prices should be allowed to fluctuate and that drones and incompetents should be fired, or that, instead of the party’s insistence on zero unemployment, an unemployment rate of 2% to 3% would make the economic system more efficient.

The next day a Soviet playwright calls for a forthright discussion of non-persons like Nikolai Bukharin and even Leon Trotsky, and a few days later the same playwright debates an American historian concerning what would have happened if only Lenin had lived a few months longer and ensured that Bukharin, not Stalin, had become the head of the Communist Party. A young scholar inquires if my new book about the Soviet economy considers the view of “rightists” like Bukharin during the early days of the Russian Revolution, and, when told that it does, replies, “Then I will read the book.”

To top it off, another paper in Moscow reports a street demonstration in progress. I walk past and find that a group of neighbors are protesting against a state contractor who wants to chop down a 200-year-old tree in order to build an office building and a parking lot. The protesters ask passersby, including foreigners, to sign a petition. They tell me that they expect to win their battle, which is already five days old.

But, as much as the Soviet Union has changed and as much as this change is likely to continue, the visitor never forgets that he still is in the Soviet Union and that the battle is far from won. Vladimir Posner, who angers so many of us here in the United States because of his rubbery view of truth, is himself attacked in the Soviet press by letter writers who regard him, of all things, as an instrument of American imperialism. He, along with Phil Donahue, is criticized for allowing Americans to trumpet the U.S. way of life in front of Soviet television viewers and for shaming the Soviet Union.

Opposition to glasnost translates, in many instances, into continued censorship and information control. When Mathias Rust flew his Cessna over Red Square, the Soviet media, except for Moscow News, delayed several days in reporting that a German pilot had landed a plane in Moscow, and took even longer to acknowledge that the landing had occurred not at the airport but outside the Kremlin wall. But the word spread quickly, particularly now that as part of glasnost the Russian-language version of the Voice of America is no longer jammed. As we drove past Red Square, our taxi driver pointed out what he wryly called Sheremetevo III, Nos. I and II being the actual airports.

The plane incident illustrates Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s problem. More and more Soviet people are coming to accept and expect glasnost. But when there is a cover-up or an outright lie, they switch even faster than before to the Voice of America and the BBC, and become even more cynical about the government’s commitment to glasnost. That skepticism is heightened by actions like those of Valentin M. Falin, chairman of the Novosti Press Agency and publisher of Moscow News. In a shouting match with Charles Wick, the head of the U.S. Information Agency, and again a week later in an interview in Moscow News, Falin, despite his reputation for leading liberalization, accused the United States of developing “exotic ethnic” bacteria that are lethal only to non-Caucasians.

This, as much as anything, illustrates how challenging glasnost can be. It means that hard truths must be acknowledged not only internally but also externally. It also means that the Soviet Union will have to forswear the disinformation and dishonest political warfare that became a habit, and it may take some time for the Soviet media to acquire the ability to dissociate fact from propaganda. Soviet authorities have come a long way, but frankness and glasnost as yet represent a policy of convenience, not an ethic. They are written on the sands of shifting political leadership, not on the stone of commitment to liberty and truth.